1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of teaching methods. More particularly, the invention pertains to a method of teaching thinking skills and knowledge acquisition using an educational toy.
2. Description of Related Art
Educational toys are often used to teach and facilitate learning. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,570,625, entitled “Magnetic Toy Blocks”, discloses blocks with indicia, pictures, or letters to be arranged to correlate subjects by definite serial relationships—logical or reasonable in nature and meaningless or unreasonable in nature. The relationships are also shown through magnetism between the blocks.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,461,574, entitled “Educational Toy”, discloses an educational toy with a plurality of polyhedra of different sizes and configurations. The polyhedra may be nested within one another.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,510,962, entitled “Molecular Structure Models”, discloses polyhedra that are arranged in specific molecular arrangements to teach stereo-chemistry.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,726,027, entitled “Teaching Aid and Educational Toy”, discloses a teaching aid and educational toy that includes a hollow box shaped as a cuboctahedron having it outer faces covered with sheets of fabric in various colors. In one embodiment, a plurality of illustration objects, such as letters or numbers are made of a fabric that adheres to the specific faces of the cuboctahedron when learning to associate objects with certain colors. Alternatively, at least one face of the box is open and the inner faces of the box are covered with materials of different textures so that a student may reach through the opening and touch a given inner face when learning to form word associations with the various textures.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,959,893, entitled “Educational Gaming Apparatus”, discloses an educational gaming apparatus that consists of a set of numbered blocks and a single operator block. The numbered blocks have digits zero through nine on each of the faces and the operator block has one or more basic mathematical symbols of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Individuals can then arrange the blocks in order, so that the uppermost faces of the blocks indicate a mathematical problem and its solution.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,778,392, entitled “Educational Block Set”, discloses a block set where each of the sides include a similar pictorial depiction of an object, such as an animal or the like with a letter imprinted on the object, preferably in a portion of the object which bears a resemblance to the letter. The edges of each side of the block are colored, with each edge being a different color for promoting color awareness, with the like colored edges of adjacent blocks establishing a preferred orientation for pictorial and indicia alignment. The individual pictorial representations on adjacent surfaces of the same block are oriented in different orthogonal directions for enabling the reading of a word on the adjoined surfaces of adjacent blocks on at least one other of the adjoined surfaces of the blocks.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,554,062, entitled “Building Word Blocks”, discloses a toy educational building block set having alphabetical and other indicia for word building. The building blocks are adapted to have letters selective secured to their surfaces to form alphabetical blocks using pegs. The blocks may be a cube, prism or larger structure. In one embodiment, the blocks are received on pegs that extend outward from a large polyhedron.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,944,312, entitled “Educational Game Apparatus for Learning Relationships Between Living or Non-Living Things”, discloses a game apparatus that teaches relationships between members and subsets of a recognized set of living to non-living things, such as the five food groups through illustrations on the faces of the game apparatus. The apparatus also includes coded indicia in the form of letters, numbers, and colors, which provide additional information to aid in children recalling relationships between various members and subsets which are illustrated in the game apparatus.
The prior art does not disclose nor teach a method for teaching thinking skills and knowledge acquisition including making distinctions, organizing into and/or making systems, recognizing relationships, and taking perspectives.